Riverland councils unite to save money

Large-scale projects such as road resealing and freight services will now be carried out on a regional basis across South Australia's Riverland.

The Loxton Waikerie, Berri Barmera and Renmark Paringa councils have formed a new alliance to work together on certain projects that affect all three districts.

The chief executive of the Renmark Paringa Council, Tony Siviour, says the Riverland Regional Procurement Roadmap will enable the councils to award bigger contracts, which will cut costs.

"What we've done initially is we've identified or targeted some areas where there's some low hanging fruit and some real opportunities to get some of those savings and the most obvious one is the resealing of roads or sealing of roads," he said.

"So that's something that we agreed to look at, so it's not just looking at the cost of resealing over one year."

He says it makes sense to work together.

"Instead of the reseal budget for us being $400,000 to $500,000 it's a $2 million contract, so we get that economies of scale ... someone wins a larger contract and they're guaranteed that work and therefore we expect their margins to be less," he said.